The Angels are Falling
by Zana Zira
Summary: Tag to 8x23. In which Castiel realizes the gravity of what he has allowed Metatron to do, and it breaks something inside the ex-Angel of the Lord in a way no human ever could. Hurt/No Comfort.


When Castiel first opened his eyes after Metatron sent him down to Earth, he didn't remember where he was. His fingers twitched as he struggled to pull himself into consciousness; the action felt strange, and it was surprisingly difficult. Perhaps he was more exhausted than he thought. Disregarding his fatigue, he pulled his heavy eyelids open, needing to see what had happened to him. His vision was cloudy, and he blinked rapidly as he tried to make it clearer. It didn't help, though. Where before he had always been able to see the molecules, the very _essences_ of everything and everyone on Earth, now he could only see the blurred shapes of trees and their leaves in the almost total darkness; for the once-angel, it felt almost as frightening as becoming entirely blind. He could hear the rustling of leaves above him, could smell the damp earth and feel decomposing plants squishing beneath his shoes as he slowly stood and extended his legs to their full height, but everything was dull now, muted. His senses were equivalent to a human's now, it seemed, and that was a very disconcerting thought.

Slowly, shakily, Castiel tested out his body, moving each of his limbs, his fingers and toes, and even twitching his nose and lips from side to side to see what it felt like. He felt a deep sense of vulnerability, of _fear_ well up inside him when he realized how slowly everything moved now. Every neuron, every twitch of every muscle fiber had to move in a sequence before his body obeyed his commands, and to him it seemed unbearably mechanical and halting. He had once moved at the speed of light, passing through time and space as effortlessly as air travelled through the sky; now he was not even certain he could convince his legs to run. Realizing he was beginning to breathe too quickly – and since when had he needed to breathe at all? – he sank back to his knees on the soft earth, leaning against the rough bark of a tree and trying to collect his thoughts as he had been trained to do for millennia.

His Grace was gone; that much, at least, he knew. What he did not know was where he was, or how long it had been since he had left Sam and Dean to finish the final trial. That thought awoke a sense of urgency in him, and he instinctively tensed the muscles in his back in preparation for flying back to help his friends. An instant later he hissed and curled in on himself, groaning low in his throat. The simple act of flexing his now nonexistent wings had given him a painful reminder of just how they had disappeared, burning away from his soul in a rush of holy fire. The wounds to his soul would leave no physical marks on his vessel – his _body_, he reminded himself slowly – but he could feel them all the same. He sighed and slumped against the tree again, his emotions simply becoming numb for the time being when he realized Sam and Dean would have to save themselves this time. He would be of no use to them as he was now. Idly, he wondered if Dean would be angry. Knowing the older Winchester, he probably would, especially since Sam was already in such a poor condition and Castiel had left him alone to suffer while he dragged Dean around to… to…

Castiel's breath caught in his throat for a moment, the realization of what had happened hitting him like a punch to the face. He had been tricked, let himself be led astray _again_ despite Dean's insistence that there was something wrong about Metatron's sudden interest in him. He had let Sam suffer, he had made Dean suffer because of his brother's pain, and now the other angels in Heaven…

The instant that thought crossed his mind, a bright flash illuminated the sky, the wind picking up speed and blowing his hair back as it violently tossed the limbs of the trees above him. Something in the back of his mind propelled him forward, and he stumbled on shaky legs toward the edge of the forest until he could see the trees beginning to thin. When he stepped out of the wall of trees and stood still in the clearing, he felt his stomach drop. The sky was alight with balls of fire, plummeting toward the ground like thousands of tiny meteorites with a sound like the hissing of lightning. There were so many of them it made the air high in the atmosphere waver with heat, dissolving the clouds around them as they broke through and fell to Earth.

Castiel looked on in awe, his hands shaking as he watched his brothers and sisters fall from their homes in Heaven. He could hear their screams growing louder in his mind as they drew closer, their cries of agony as their wings were burned from their bodies just as his had been, and yet he could not bring himself to silence them; this was his fault, and it would be wrong not to see what he had caused. Many of the angels had already crashed into the ground, most too far away for him to have any hope of reaching.

One, though, had slammed into the earth only a short distance from where he stood; he could still see the embers clinging to the charred remains of what had been the angel's wings. Castiel made his way toward her, running as quickly as he could and shouting out to her in desperation, hoping to get her attention somehow. When he reached her prone body he dropped to his knees, turning her over and looking at the damage that had been done. The angel's back was charred and bloody, the skin singed off in the places where her wings should have been attached. Her eyes were open wide, her pupils dilated as they began to glow blue and then flicker between light and dark, and she hissed in pain when Castiel turned her onto her back.

"Sister…" he whispered, his voice raspier than he remembered and incredibly weak. "We must get you help…"

The other angel shook her head, her eyes narrowing and her features contorting into an expression of unadulterated rage when she looked into Castiel's face. She quickly shoved him away, her breaths coming so fast she was almost hyperventilating, and then a moment later her Grace simply flickered out and disappeared – the fate of all angels who had not managed to latch onto a human vessel before they fell completely. Castiel stared at her for several minutes, not daring to let himself acknowledge that she was gone. Finally, he crawled over to the prone body of his fallen comrade, gathering her up into his weak, human arms and holding her to his chest while he shook and panted with terror and grief.

And when Castiel finally screamed, his voice no longer resonated with the sounds only angels can hear. When he had spoken in centuries past, the very sound of his words had brought humans to bow on their knees before the Angel of the Lord. Now, though, he sounded so very small, so very broken, so very… human. The thought of that made Castiel scream all the more.

And from his stolen seat in Heaven, Metatron looked down on all of the fallen angels, watching Castiel's story beginning to unfold, and smiled.


End file.
